learning; failure is just evidence that they haven’t mastered
the task yet. Driven by curiosity about what will and will not
work, they experiment. When things don’t pan out, they don’t
give up or see themselves as inadequate. They pay attention
to what went wrong and try something different next time.
In adults, such a mind-set allows managers to strike the right
tone of openness, humility, curiosity, and humor in ways that
encourage their teams to learn.
Some managers might argue that fostering psychological
safety can make it difficult to hold people accountable. Certainly, if employees feel particularly close to one another and
the managerial hand is relatively weak, performance standards can slip. But in general, psychological safety is independent from employee accountability, and healthy organizations
foster both by setting high performance aspirations while acknowledging areas of uncertainty that require continued exploration or debate. Setting ambitious goals while conceding
the limits of current knowledge encourages striving without
shutting down inquiry. On the other hand, an undue focus on
accountability without psychological safety can produce a variety of organizational dysfunctions. (For more on this, see the
exhibit “Does Psychological Safety Hinder Performance?”)
Psychological safety is not about being nice – or about lowering performance standards. Quite the opposite: It’s about
recognizing that high performance requires the openness, flexibility, and interdependence that can develop only in a psychologically safe environment, especially when the situation is
changing or complex. Psychological safety makes it possible to
give tough feedback and have difficult conversations – which
demand trust and respect – without the need to tiptoe around
the truth.
Not surprisingly, the most important influence on psychological safety is the nearest boss. Signals sent by people in
power are critical to employees’ ability and willingness to offer
their ideas and observations. This means that levels of psychological safety vary strikingly from department to department
and work group to work group, even in organizations known
for having a powerful corporate culture. In a study of eight
units in two teaching hospitals, for example, I found large
differences in employees’ beliefs about whether it was safe to
report medication errors – and differences in error-reporting
rates as high as tenfold. As a result, some units were identifying risks and coming up with ways to avoid future problems,
while others were not because the people in them were terrified to speak up.
Such findings shine the spotlight, for better or worse, on
middle managers. How can they help create psychological
safety in the groups they lead? A couple of simple, if not always intuitive, steps appear to make an enormous difference.
The first is to explicitly acknowledge the lack of answers
to the tough problems groups face. (Strange as it may seem,
very few managers do this. It’s not that they don’t recognize
the imperfect state of knowledge; they just fail to mention
it.) Acknowledging uncertainty may seem like a weakness,
but in fact it’s usually an intelligent and accurate diagnosis
of a murky situation. When supervisors admit that they don’t
know something or made a mistake, their genuine display of
humility encourages others to do the same.
The second is to ask questions – real questions, not leading
or rhetorical ones. Simply put, when people believe that their
managers want to hear from them and value their input, they
respond more. Indeed, one could feel awkward or foolish not
speaking in response to a question.
This is especially so when lives are on the line. In one study
of quality-improvement projects in intensive-care units at 23
hospitals, my colleagues and I showed that when medical directors asked questions, acknowledged their own fallibility
or lack of knowledge, and appreciated others’ contributions,
the people in their units felt a higher degree of psychological
safety than those in units whose leaders did not do so. As a
result, these units more quickly adopted new practices that
could reduce infection rates and lead to other improvements
in patient care.
Senior executives, too, play an important role in building
psychological safety. For instance, as CEO of Prudential Financial, Art Ryan instituted a series of training initiatives called
“Safe to Say” to let employees know that their voices were not
only welcome but required for success. Eli Lilly’s chief science officer introduced “failure parties” to honor intelligent
experiments that failed. Policy interventions like these work
best when accompanied by a clear and credible rationale for
why openness and directness are needed to achieve superb
performance. Senior executives may be best positioned to
convey this message.
Execution-as-Learning: Four Steps
Organizations that adopt an execution-as-learning model don’t
focus on getting things done more efficiently than competitors do. Instead, they focus on learning faster. The goal is to
find out what works and what doesn’t; employees must absorb
new knowledge while executing, often sacrificing short-term
efficiency to gain insight into and respond to novel problems.
My research has revealed four steps for making this happen.
Step 1: Provide process guidelines. Figuring out the best
ways to accomplish different kinds of work in a rapidly changing environment starts with seeking out best practices gathered from experts, publications, and even competitors. The
path to execution-as-learning is thus similar to the path to
efficiency – it starts with establishing standard processes. But
the goal of these processes is not so much to produce efficiency as to facilitate learning, because effective knowledge
organizations recognize that today’s best practices won’t be
tomorrow’s and won’t work in every situation.
For example, the renowned design firm IDEO adheres faithfully to a standard process for developing its many innovative
products. Similarly, in a hospital, even though each patient is
